


We’re All From The Same Planet

by neveroffanon



Series: addicts and broken things [2]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: F/M, Obsessive!Rio returns, This is still within episode 2.11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 18:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18833848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveroffanon/pseuds/neveroffanon
Summary: Rio and Dean have a little talk.  Or where I think Dean’s decision to serve Beth with papers (the audacity of this man!) came from.





	We’re All From The Same Planet

He’d decided a year ago, a day ago, a breath ago what he was going to do with Elizabeth.  She was too good.  Too smart.  Too scared.  She was him, but wrapped up in twenty years of skin that needed shedding.  The bullet in her her husband’s chest had been the first, inching slice he’d made in the old leather that choked her.  Her face, when he’d taken the shot, had been everything he’d wanted.  It had been enough for him in that moment to remind her that everything had its price and that no one was untouchable.  Even him.  He wanted that memory to live with her, every time she took air.  Nothing lasts.  A wrong move, a little miscalculation, and everything was ended.  

He sighed, dragging a hand over his jaw.  The mama van was long out of sight and business needed tending to, but he stayed, perched in the window, peering down at the steps that she’d climbed.  Slick, black metal, punched through with holes, glistened up at him.  He knew this fire escape.  It was rickety and creaked in the wind something awful.  Marcus thought a ghost lived in it, the thing howled so, and so he’d named it Christmas Future, after seeing the movie at his mama’s house.  The boy wasn’t wrong.  It wasn’t no delightful hike up those steps.  

She’d made it anyway, shedding more of that deadweight skin along the way.  All her miscalculations, her missteps, her wrong moves, had put her back into the palm of his hand, time and time again.  He’d made his own mistakes, too.  Getting soft on her while she learned.  Letting her know a little too much of who he really was.  Letting her know how much he wanted it— he couldn’t help but let her know she was fire— those’d all been mistakes. 

But, he’d made it this far, not making the same mistake twice.  Once he’d underestimated her fear and how much stupid tv the woman watched.  Now, he’d underestimated just how much she loved her family.  So he’d let her love them.  Let her love them all the way to lockup, if that’s what she wanted.  As long as, in the end, she saw that it was not heeding him that had put her there.  

Elizabeth and her girls wanted the body.  They’d find one— they were too quick not to— and so would the FBI.  And if she was smart, she’d peel off that last layer, and ask him what she should’ve been asking all along.  What she’d asked him once, when this thing between them had all started.  When he thought she was a stay at home, entitled bitch with too much time on her hands, too smart for the sheep in her 'hood, and too pretty for her man.  

He knew better now, though she was still too smart and too pretty for the fucker that called himself her husband.  Tilting his head down, he looked at his watch.  Almost gone five, Marcus would be looking for him, so he peeled away from the window and fought against breathing in deep as he walked in her wake.  She barely wore any scent, he knew that.  There was nothing to smell.  Nothing but dryer sheets.  But he could imagine. The tang on his tongue, on his fingers, on his lips, and in his nose when they’d finished and still lay panting on each other— that smell was still there.  All he had to do was think on it.  So he did, meandering through the door and down to the garage.  Sitting in the car, smiling at Marcus, chatting with him while they drove back to his mama’s house.  The scent followed him all the way. 

* * *

“So here’s the thing, _Dean_.”  The rat faced bastard leaned against his car, looking for all the world like the thugs he saw on the news.  And he was here, in his garage, like he owned the place.  He knew it!  He knew Beth had been seeing him again.  He knew she wouldn’t be able to keep off.  No matter that she swore up and down that she hadn’t seen him, that she didn’t miss it, that she was here and trying.  The bastard was under her skin, and she couldn’t get away.  

“I’m gonna need you to give Elizabeth a little space,” the thug, whatever his name was, kept talking, but all Dean could hear was his wife’s name rolled over the fucker’s tongue like he owned it.  So he approached, slamming the inside door to the house, dropping the two wooden stairs to the concrete floor of the garage in one ankle jarring step, and charging at him, fists balled up, feeling the shrapnel like a bright pinprick behind his heart.   

The thug stared at him, mouth drawing tight, before a grin broke out over his face, and Dean slowed to a stop.  “Oh, you wanted to go again, was that it?”  The asshole chuckled and stood straight.  “I ain’t at my best, but if you feeling it, we can go,” he paused, beady black eyes shining at him like something from those horror flicks he’d like to watch as a kid.  “Or you could think about Emma and Jane coming up on you on this floor covered in your own shit.”

“Don’t you say their names,” he hissed at him.  It was sick.  How did he even know his daughters’ names?

“Why not?  They play soccer with my boy in the park.  Jane was too cute the other day.  She came up crying something bad, saying _Mr. Rio_ —.”

“Stop it, stop it, stop it!”  Dean dragged his hands through his hair, took a step away from him, not knowing if he was more pissed at Beth, himself, or the thug.  

“Right... so that won’t happen.  So long as you listen to what I’m telling you,” the thug eyed him up and down, but Dean kept silent.  Krav Maga wouldn’t be any help against a gun.  He remembered last time well enough.  Krav Maga wouldn’t be any help even without a gun.  

“Good.  So you’re gonna give Elizabeth some space.”

“What’s that mean?”  Dean asked.  He’d heard him the first time, but it didn’t make sense.  He’d given her space after Amber.  He’d given her five years of space, which had led to Amber and all the rest in the first place.  Space was not what was needed.   

“Space means space.  What the fuck else would it be?  And if you don’t, well, there ain’t gonna be no custody battle when she puts in her papers.”  

“Here’s a problem,” Dean found himself saying, that hot, sharp pinch of metal in his chest twinging worse than before.  “Beth is _my wife_.  If you slept with her, I don’t give a damn.  God knows I did more and worse.  She’s gotten her own back, and she came back to me, anyway.  And her, and the kids, and me, we’re doing just fine without you giving me this bullshit about _space_.  So you can fuck right off and get out of my house.”

A twitch of a smile was all the reply he got for a long moment.  

“ _My house_ , Dean.  I been paying your bills for you man.  The mortgage, the dealership, the food on yo kids’ plates.  That’s me man.  Me and Elizabeth,” the other man stepped close, leaning in until he could plant a burning hot hand on his neck.  “You all twisted up about the fact that I was hittin’ it, but the sex... that’s the least of it.  She don’t need a man who can’t do for her kids, Dean.”  The pressure increased for the space of a breath and Dean remembered being shaken like a doll as his heart sped up.  He looked away.  

He heard the other man laughing, and dragged his eyes back.  The smile dropped off the thug’s face.  “I’m sorry, did I make you mad?  Why don’t you go, spend sometime with your mama? Take the kids.  Cool off.  And when I let you know, well, then that’s when you come back.”  He paused, waiting.

“And if I don’t?”

“You ain’t that much of a fool Dean.”  The hand dropped away, and the thug turned to leave.  He wasn’t a fool, no.  He’d figured it out, hadn’t he; about Beth and this psycho she’d fucked.  He’d sold the meds she’d needed sold, hadn’t he.  He’d figured out how to make her stay, hadn’t he.  But the anger bubbled up anyway, and he said the first that came into his head.   

“What does she see in you anyway?”  He sounded like a complete goober.  Like a high school kid, mad that the popular guy was stealing his girl.  

The asshole turned around, head tilted.  

“I listen, man.  There ain’t no woman I ever met, who don’t want to be heard.”  He shrugged, and walked off.

**Author's Note:**

> So let’s pretend that I didn’t get interrupted about a zillion times watching this episode and haven’t completely forgotten the continuity? Please? I honestly can’t remember and don’t have time to check, lol, on when Dean gave Beth the divorce papers. So let’s just roll with this, yeah?


End file.
